On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:32:44 GMT, "JohnR66" wrote:

I'm trying to solve an issue at my brothers house. He came home and the
outlets around his kitchen had no power. I found the GFCI was tripped. I
reset, but it trips instantly. I unplugged every device and it still trips.
I bought a new GFCI, still trips.

Next I checked the load side hot to neutral with my meter. Infinity
resistance (nothing pugged in). I checked to be sure I was getting 120 volts
to the black wire and that it was connected to the line side of the GFCI.

Some other notes:
If I bypass the GFCI, The circuit works (no short)
With load side of GFCI not connected, it does not trip.
If I touch the black load side wire to the hot load side of GFCI, no trip.
If I touch the white load side wire to the to the neutral load side of the
CFCI, it trips! (I'm confused on that one)

Bathroom has its own GFCI circuit that works and I can find no outside
outlets on the dead circuit.

I'm puzzled on this one. Any ideas?


Make sure hardwired appliances like the disposal, microwave, clock
outlet, etc. are not improperly on same circuit.

But..by measuring infinity between black and white you know there are
no loads you don't know about. By bypassing the gfci and not blowing
breaker you know there is no short from hot to ground or neutral. Is
your meter sensitive enough to detect difference between very high
resistance and infinity? Doesn't take much of a leakage path to trip
the GFCI.

When you connect the neutral and the GFCI trips, was the hot still
connected? It sounds like it was not from your description. If the
hot was not connected, and the GFCI still trips when you connect
neutral, then current must be flowing in the neutral from some other
source. Measure the voltage from neutral to ground (on the wires
going to the outlets) with the GFCI disconnected. If there is no
voltage, then measure resistance from neutral to ground. It should be
infinity with the GFCI disconnected. It's possible the neutral is
cross tied to some other circuit.

If all that seems to check out, then I would start isolating sections
of the wiring by disconnecting outlets along the way. Start in the
middle if you can figure out how the wires were run. that will
isolate the problem to a half, then repeat in that half until you find
the problem.

HTH and good luck.

Paul F.